For now, the flying drone army is comprised of relatively innocent quadcopters. The researchers used GPS signals to track the specific locations of each drone and radio transmitters so that they can communicate with each other. This ensures that if the drones get too close to each other, they can self-correct and prevent a big crash. The team's flocking algorithms are so good, though, that the drone flocks can even deal with bottlenecks without getting jammed up. Watch them in action here.

Advertisement

The flocking of the drones is obviously inspired by nature, but 80s futurism also played a role. Tamás Vicsek, a physicist at Hungary's Eötvös Loránd University who led the research, based the flocking drone project on a 1986 computer program called Boids that simulated flying objects according to three rules: alignment, attraction, and repulsion. Regardless of how they work, though, it's still a little bit terrifying to see robots behaving like animals. But I guess we should get used to it… [Nature]